Five Important News Stories from Last Week

Last week was a pretty huge week in the Twitterverse. Here’s five things you may have missed which took the internet by storm:

1. Nobel Prize winner, Sir Tim Hunt, has been called out for making sexist comments about female scientists.
At a conference in South Korea, he told the audience that the trouble with girls in the lab is that “they fall in love with you, you fall in love with them and then when they’re criticised, they cry”. Twitter obviously responded, with female (and some male!) scientists from around the globe forcing the hashtag #distractinglysexy to go viral. You can check out some of the best comments here.

Source: Twitter

2. Alton Towers theme park in the UK had a malfunction with its rollercoaster “The Smiler”, which left four people seriously injured, with one having her leg amputated.
Kay Burley, a journalist from Sky News in the UK, interviewed Alton Towers CEO Nick Varney. The interview has been highly criticised and amassed over 1500 written complaints to Ofcom and 55000 signatures on a petition for Ms Burley’s termination. The petition has since been rejected however you can read more about that here. For more details about the rollercoaster crash which may confront some readers, click here.

3. Tumblr users accused famous YouTuber and author John Green of pandering to teenage girls in a way which could be regarded as paedophilic.
Tumblr users jumped on a bandwagon thread to tag John Green in a thread accusing him of sexual abuse. The comment strand said: “I bet John Green thinks people don’t like him because he’s a ‘dork’ or a nerd or whatever when in reality it’s because he’s a creep who panders to teenage girls so that he can amass some weird cult-like following…” etc. John Geen responded, saying that he believed the accusations trivialised abuse and that he will no longer be using Tumblr in the same way he has in hte past. To read the whole Tumblr accusation thread and John’s eloquent response, click here.

4. Australia has been accused of paying people smugglers to turn back.
Though the claims are so far unconfirmed, Green’s senator Sarah Hanson-Young said in a statement that “Paying cash bribes to boat crews amounts ot people trafficking” and it is understood that the allegations are being taken very seriously. The United Nations and other Human Rights groups have criticised Australia’s policies regarding asylum seekers and refugees in the past. For more, click here.

5. An Australian couple have threatened to get divorced (thus undermining the sancticity of marriage) if (and when) same-sex marriages are approved in Australia.
Nick Jensen and his wife Sarah stated that they will be getting a divorce if homosexuals are allowed to marry, leading to them being uninvited from the weddings of friends, photoshopped photos on the internet and fake Grindr profiles of Mr Jensen seeking men. They said that they plan to still live together, refer to each other as husband and wife and even have more children together, however as this is the case, it is unlikely that their divorce will be approved and they will have to remain bound in an institution which will soon recognise that the santicity of marriage is not effected by the sexes of those involved, merely their love for one another. To read about their reasoning, click here.